


Contra(diction)

by tormalyne



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: A Gentleman and the partner he wants to kill, Except when he doesn't, Gen, M/M, Niou loves poking things that want to bite his hand off, Rikkai rues the day, The only thing worse than working together would be to lose, Yagyuu is a crafty bastard too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tormalyne/pseuds/tormalyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, Yanagi Renji was unable to say with one hundred percent certainty that Rikkai’s first doubles pair wouldn’t self-destruct.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contra(diction)

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic is super old.

In the beginning, Yanagi Renji was unable to say with one hundred percent certainty that Rikkai’s first doubles pair wouldn’t self-destruct. What he could say was that nothing the pair did would be as simple as sputtering and dying, nothing so simple as a clean break and a retreat to impartial distance. Yagyuu Hiroshi and Niou Masaharu would either win or scorch and flare -- turn themselves to ash rather than admit defeat. The first day they played together, Renji calculated the chance of burn-out to be 99.9%.  


***

Had he been anyone else, Yagyuu Hiroshi would have been considered a rich snob. He was the son of a wealthy doctor, older brother, straight-A student - one of the risings stars of the tennis team from elementary to junior high, and never considered anything but pre-regular. Yagyuu was well-spoken, quiet, and liked by all of his teachers. His politeness garnered him the respect of every girl in his grade, and that of some in the grades above him. The first time some of the boys cornered him, Yagyuu walked away with only a single, purpling bruise, and very few of his classmates tried to bother him again. It was the largest of that first group of boys who began to spread word that Yagyuu Hiroshi, the golden boy, actually was exactly what he seemed: a model gentleman.

That year, Yagyuu found that classmates who used to glare at him greeted him in the hallway, and the more daring girls began to offer to share their lunch. Yagyuu barely seemed to notice the change of attention; he smiled at the girls even as he politely refused their handmade food, and fell in with no group of boys at after school clubs. His parents tried not to worry; Yagyuu had always been a quiet boy and would, his father said, do as he chose and be perfectly fine.

His father’s words proved true, the first year of junior high finding Yagyuu popular, though still distant, still a top student, and even more of a thrill to his female fans with his immediate placement within the pre-regulars of Rikkai’s tennis team. He continued his life much as he had in elementary school, held distantly apart from his year-mates in the tennis club. He watched the uproar caused by three first years named as regulars without comment, practiced with anyone who asked, and disappointed his seniors with his behavior only when he failed to drop a game.

Halfway through the year, rumors of a transfer student began to filter through the school, groups of students at the lunch tables chattering about the amusement value of a love letter – written in a hand amazingly like Tokiya’s own – left on Emi’s desk, or giggling girls in the hall whispering about sweeping strands of messy, bleached hair topping a smirking face. Girls that Yagyuu helped with homework, heads bent with their long, shining hair brushing at the edge of his glasses, inevitably mentioned the student, either asking if Yagyuu had heard of his latest exploit, chagrined but still intrigued, or sputtering into fits of indignant rage at the mention of the name Niou Masaharu.

Noteworthy, to be sure, but Yagyuu chose not to concern himself with such a guaranteed source of trouble. Niou’s already-legendary pranks, the constant talk and speculation of the junior high, smothered any spark of interest Yagyuu might have had with the thought of what was entirely too much negative attention. The two had no classes together, and Yagyuu never saw the boy in the hall or at lunch; they remained distinct satellites out of a common orbit.

It was a certain surprise, then, to find Niou at tennis practice one bright afternoon, recognizable to Yagyuu from girls’ descriptions even standing in an easy slouch against the fence and his face shadowed. More interesting than his presence, in Yagyuu’s skeptical mind, was Niou’s ability to back up each of the careless taunts he threw out like dares with the panting of his opponent after every stolen point.

Yagyuu watched Niou play, preoccupied during his own match (an easy win against another first year) by Niou’s style: confident movement and sharp eyes, and Yagyuu wondered if that quicksilver figure truly was playing so many moves ahead each game-- and how best to crush him when they faced each other.

Their match came sooner than Yagyuu expected. Niou won his way into the top tier of the pre-regulars, won one set without even a drop of sweat and lost the next to a boy who could be called mediocre at best. His next draw along the ranking lines saw his name matched side by side with Yagyuu Hiroshi

Yagyuu watched as some of the other first years gathered around Niou, offering advice or laughing consolation for his upcoming loss. Niou ignored every word, staring across the net at Yagyuu: an off-color mirror when Yagyuu raised one elegant eyebrow, save for his grin, anticipatory and vicious. Yagyuu felt his own lips draw down in a disapproving frown, and raised his bottle for a swallow of water to wash the instinctive distaste from his mouth.

The spectators left the court at the refereeing senior’s impatient command, whispering to each other and failing in poor imitations of Niou’s slow, insouciant pace to the net.

“You can have the serve, Yagyuu,” he drawled, tossing his head to flick a tail of white hair over his shoulder.

“Which,” Yagyuu offered in reply, a moment later: “rough” when Niou lowered his own racket from his shoulder to spin, plastic clattering onto the ground with the upside down “P” facing Yagyuu. Wordlessly, Yagyuu moved to the baseline to serve.

The final game in the set ended with six games to four: Niou’s win despite Yagyuu’s use of his developing high-speed shot. Niou grinned at him over their politely clasped hands, both their grips a shade too tight, and walked off the court after offering a cheerful “nice playing you.” He disappeared into the waiting, cheering crowd of his year-mates without glancing back.

Something deep inside Yagyuu burned raging and cold. He barely saw the boy he played against in his final match of the day, only the blur of a stunned face when he gave Yagyuu his awed congratulations for a lightning fast six-love win. Yagyuu stayed after practice, slamming balls against a single spot on the wall long after it was too dark to see and his arm too numb to feel the impact of the ball hitting his racket’s strings. When he left, he barely nodded to Yanagi Renji watching him from the edge of the court, tried to focus on the evenly offered remark that his match was the only one, besides the dropped set, in which Niou had lost even a single game.

He took grim satisfaction that Niou, lazing against the wall beside Renji, didn’t warrant even a flicker of his expression.

Yagyuu, perhaps pettily, refused to talk to Niou after that. He ignored anything Niou said at practice or even his unexpected presence when he slid his tray onto the table next to Yagyuu and broke the sudden silence of the lunch group by asking if anyone had been into the third floor bathroom yet. Everyone at the table broke into frantic questions, eager for some advanced warning. Only Yagyuu said nothing, finishing his food in calm silence and leaving the cafeteria without a word.

The next week, Yagyuu walked into the tennis clubhouse, met with hushed, pitying whispers and murmured “good lucks.” He was, he soon learned from Renji, to be one half of Rikkai’s first doubles pair for the coming year if he and his partner could prove their way with a win.

His partner, Niou Masaharu. Yagyuu forced his hands not to clench into fists.

Yagyuu forced himself to respond civilly to Niou’s greeting when he entered the courts, let Niou throw an arm around his shoulders, stiffened with dislike, and didn’t shove Niou away.

“Something wrong, Yagyuu?” Niou asked his new partner, amused and smirking, leaning close enough for his breath to tickle Yagyuu’s ear.

“I prefer to win,” Yagyuu answered, stopped himself again from shrugging off Niou’s arm.

“That’s good,” Niou said, unexpectedly serious. “That’s perfect. I always win.”

Niou slid his arm off Yagyuu’s shoulders, leaving sleeves to collar of Yagyuu’s jersey wrinkled and the hair on the back of Yagyuu’s head mussed out of place. Niou turned and walked toward the clubhouse in his perpetual slump, one arm raised in a lazy goodbye, ignoring the vice-captain’s angry reminder that he had practice.

Yagyuu watched Niou for a moment, smoothed his collar as close to crisp as he could make it, and reached over one shoulder to pull the “kick me” sign off of his back.  


***

They practiced together, more or less. They learned to move and anticipate, and Niou called it perfect sync, even though it wasn’t, yet, just to irritate Yagyuu. The mere idea that he could treat Niou, rude and shallow and interested only in his own amusement Niou, as a partner, that he could actually begin to predict Niou’s next shot -- Yagyuu found it intolerable, and Niou delighted in it.

They circled closer and closer to perfect, though, Niou’s words more true every day; their timing, more often than not, was more precise than even Renji’s calculations of the exact trajectory of Yagyuu’s returning shot, and Niou took every opportunity to remind Yagyuu of their annoyingly close sync. Niou slipped into chairs Yagyuu pulled out before he could sit down, grinning impishly while he thanked his partner for his courtesy, as expected, he said, of the school’s gentleman. Niou offered to help girls with their school work because he knew that Yagyuu had promised to take his little sister shopping after school that day, and Yagyuu was very sorry but maybe Niou could meet with her in his place? Niou was a sudden pressing warmth under Yagyuu’s arm even before he stepped onto a twisted ankle that was too sore to take his weight.

It seemed, to Yagyuu’s homeroom, that Niou spent more time with Yagyuu, leaning over with one hand on Yagyuu’s desk to needle or playing tricks on Yagyuu’s classmates, than he did in his own classroom. Girls from the surrounding rooms were eager to catch a glimpse of the pair, crowding at the windows to the classroom to watch Yagyuu studiously staring at a book open on his desk, or notes for an upcoming quiz, and Niou tilted over him, laughing and poking at him in seemingly friendly, if prickly companionship. The girls soon drew a crowd of boys, first years drew upperclassmen; no one had ever teased Yagyuu Hiroshi before, had ever walked up to him and stolen a page full of precise, neat handwriting and refused to give it back until the day after Yagyuu’s literature test because it was so fun to see what Yagyuu would do.

The afternoons at practice after Niou’s nastier tricks, Yagyuu wouldn’t respond to Niou except to offer a few soft, disapproving words and a bout of silence on the court. Renji noted each occurrence down in the notebook he kept for the pair, and Kirihara Akaya, a cocky, talented elementary student present for the after-exams training, took to calling the tense atmosphere surrounding the two the result of lover’s spats. Yagyuu closed himself off, subzero chill to Niou's mocking silences, and they won games with brutal, crushing skill. Yagyuu would start talking to Niou again the next day and Yagyuu’s life continued along what had come to be its normal course: Niou a perpetual thorn slowly digging under Yagyuu’s skin.

The first term of second year, found Niou in the same homeroom and transferred into Yagyuu’s advanced math class, his teachers aghast at the waste of his miraculous, previously unused talent. How could he have been overlooked (how could such a trouble student be so hard working?) and of course Yagyuu-kun won’t mind helping him catch up. Suddenly, Niou was a laughing face at the dinner table once a week (How nice to finally meet one of your friends, Hiroshi! and Niou sneering at him behind his mother’s back), then smirking mouth and glinting eyes, his head lowered over Yagyuu’s text book – he never bothered to bring his own to study sessions.

The first snow fell, and Niou left off dogging his partner long enough to join in the campus-wide snowball fight (the tennis club once again bitterly declared the unrivaled winners), and dragged himself into class five minutes late with his cheeks flushed and hair dripping snowmelt, the edge of a glove poking out of one pocket. Niou sat behind Yagyuu, dropping little packed balls of ice down the collar of Yagyuu’s shirt that left trickling tracks down his spine, and explained to the irate teacher that he was charting the spread of melting water in direct relation to Yagyuu’s discomfort.

It was one of the rare times that Niou was openly brazen enough to be sent to detention, and after school, Sanada Genichirou sent Yagyuu to find him and deliver the captain’s punishment of two hundred laps around the inside courts. Yagyuu, as the troublemaker’s partner, stayed to mark off each circuit Niou ran.

Niou finished after dark when streetlights flickered off the packed and trodden snow. Yagyuu, wrapped snugly in his scarf and jacket, had just stepped outside when Niou jogged up to him, lazy smirk in place beneath his thick hood and hands bared to the cold. They set off toward Yagyuu’s house for one of the weekly math study sessions. Periodically, Niou blew on his hands, breath misting in the air; Yagyuu could see the stiffness creeping into his normally deft fingers with each passing minute.

“What,” Yagyuu asked, resigned, “did you do with your gloves?” He hoped he wouldn’t be the confidant of Niou’s latest trick.

Niou reached over to brush at Yagyuu’s still-damp collar.

“They’re soaked. Needed some way to get the snow inside, and I’d be colder wearing ‘em.” He traced his hand down Yagyuu’s back, over the down winter coat and along the lines the bits of snow had traveled. Yagyuu shivered, the damp patches on his shirt pressing against the curve of his spine.

“It was worth it,” Niou noted, off-hand, “to see you so pissed.” He slipped the hand under Yagyuu’s coat, cold and shaking on the small of Yagyuu’s back even through Yagyuu’s uniform jacket.

“I wasn’t upset at all.” Niou smiled at the lie. “Your infantile pranks are hardly worth reacting to.” Under Niou’s hand, the muscles of Yagyuu’s back tensed, Yagyuu holding himself poised very close to pretending that Niou didn’t exist.

Niou yanked Yagyuu’s neatly tucked shirt from the waistband of his pants and slid freezing fingers up against Yagyuu’s heated skin.

“Don’t lie. You hated it.” Yagyuu didn’t reply, only moved a step away; Niou stepped forward with him and grabbed a fistful of Yagyuu’s shirt.

“You’re so good at pretending, Yagyuu. Everyone else thinks you’re so polite. All the girls call you the perfect gentleman, did you know that? But you get so fucking mad at me, don’t you?”

Niou pulled back and tucked his hands into his pants pockets as he strolled away, left Yagyuu standing alone a block away from his house. Niou didn’t miss a single question on the next day’s math test, and smirked when the teacher beamingly remarked that Yagyuu’s excellent tutoring had surely been the cause.

We always win, Yagyuu thought, and made himself believe that was all that mattered.  


***

Yagyuu was late to his morning class a week later-- not because of Niou, directly, but because Renji wanted a word about their doubles play. Since its creation, the Yagyuu-Niou combination had steadily won every match, improved each time they played, and suddenly, though their remarkable synchronization had not decreased, it had ground to a peculiar halt in its growth. Renji offered it just as an observation, but Yagyuu could draw his own conclusions: their pair was good – good enough to keep the spot as Rikkai’s doubles one on the regular team. It just wasn’t at its best. They weren’t at the peak of their abilities, and, as a small, triumphant voice that sounded unpleasantly like Niou pointed out, they could still lose.

He hadn’t spoken to Niou since their conversation in the street a week ago except the few sparse words required for a tennis match. It was easy enough not to talk to Niou during class, easy to partner one of the blushing girls for an exercise in quadratic equations rather than slipping into his usual pair with Niou; it was easy to sit quietly at lunch, isolated by his displeasure, while year-mates clustered around Niou’s bright head bent in laughter – sharing a joke that none of the gatherers knew was at their expense. It was easy enough to play doubles in silence, wordless sign play and seamless communication between partners unnerving the opposing team-- but they weren’t improving, and Yagyuu couldn’t stand to lose.

The weekly study sessions had stopped entirely, Yagyuu unsurprised to discover that Niou didn’t need his help to learn the material at all. They had always met at Yagyuu’s house, Niou sprawled across the neat floor of Yagyuu’s room to work on a problem set, Yagyuu seated at his desk to do English homework, so Niou’s mother was understandably surprised to open her door onto someone who couldn’t be less like her son asking if he could please speak to Niou if it wasn’t an intrusion. No, Yagyuu said, he’d already eaten at home, thank you, and yes, he would be sure to watch out for anything Niou’s little brother had left in the hall. He let her show him to the door, not of Niou’s room but the garage, before she went back to scolding the round-faced little boy in the kitchen, phrases like “don’t listen to your brother” and “what am I supposed to do with BOTH of you!?” fading from hearing as the door to the hall swung shut behind her.

Yagyuu hesitated as a scraping noise drifted through the closed door in front of him, almost turned and left because what he was about to do wasn’t what polite, well-mannered Yagyuu Hiroshi would do. Then he thought of Renji’s notebook at the day’s practice, open but scribbles all weeks old, and he pushed open the door without knocking. He stepped into the dark little room, gaze on bleached hair almost glowing in the gloom against the side of a sedate grey car. Niou, still dressed in his school uniform but with sleeves messily pushed to his elbows, held a racket with one hand, the head resting on the concrete of the floor. A new racket, Yagyuu thought; his old one had been an older model of the same Prince brand.

“What a surprise, Yagyuu. Come to be a good boy and help me out with math?” Niou quirked one eyebrow upward, his hand clenching on the racket’s grip.

Yagyuu shrugged off his coat and school jacket, set them aside on an empty shelf, and began to roll up his sleeves. “Your mother must be a very patient woman to put up with two terrors.”

Niou grinned, tension abruptly vanishing from his thin frame.

“I see. This visit,” Niou paused to spin his racket, its edge scraping along the concrete as he focused his gaze on the marking at the top of the grip, “is about our doubles.” The racket clattered to the ground near Yagyuu’s toes: rough. Niou bent over to pick it up and spun it again: rough. Yagyuu watched him in silence. Again: rough. Again: rough. Each time Niou spun, each time the racket landed rough.

“Yagyuu, if you win the spin, we’ll do this your way. If I win, we’ll do it mine.” The racket stilled in Niou’s hand for a moment, then spun away again.

“Which,” Niou said, laughing.

“Smooth,” Yagyuu said, and it landed rough.


End file.
